Inside Move: ATAS to tape Emmy speeches

Acad looking to make telecast more entertaining

The Academy of TV Arts & Sciences is reconsidering a plan that would have eliminated acceptance speeches from certain Emmy winners this year.

The org’s board will discuss whether or not to go ahead with the plan at its Monday night meeting.

Looking to energize the kudofest and make more room during the three-hour telecast for entertainment elements, org announced earlier this year that pretaped thank-yous would take the place of live speeches from winners in all the directing and writing categories as well as in awards for telepics, minis, variety/music/comedy series and specials.

That move was a compromise from an earlier plan to shift several of those categories out of the Primetime ceremony entirely. Org reconsidered a wholesale shift of categories after the writers and directors guilds balked.

Members of the TV Academy’s writers, directors and producers peer groups came up with the pretaped video idea, which org leaders believed would shave around 20 minutes off the telecast’s three-hour running time.

But ATAS said the decision was subject to review once an executive producer was selected for this year’s Emmy telecast (Sept. 18 on CBS).

“Now that Ken Ehrlich has been hired as executive producer, we are reviewing the production logistics of the show to see if we are accomplishing our stated goals,” the Academy said in a statement.